Siemens Powers On 1.25 MW Solar-Plus-Storage Microgrid at Its Wendell
- Solar: 1.25 MW carport array
- Battery: 3.9 MWh
- Utility: Duke Energy (Carolinas)
- Facility: 272,000 sq ft electrification HQ
- EV chargers: 42 on-site
Siemens has powered on an on-site microgrid at its electrification and automation headquarters in Wendell, North Carolina, pairing a 1.25 MW solar carport array with a 3.9 MWh battery energy storage system. The company unveiled the project on May 11, 2026, describing it as the largest solar-plus-storage industrial microgrid interconnected with Duke Energy’s distribution network in the Carolinas. The system can island the roughly 272,000-square-foot plant from the grid during outages, protecting production of the medium-voltage power equipment the facility builds.
What Is Being Built
The microgrid combines the 1.25 MW solar carport, the 3.9 MWh battery, building controls, and 42 on-site Siemens VersiCharge EV chargers under a single energy-management system. Siemens integrated the project with its own hardware, including the SICAM A8000 microgrid controller, SIPROTEC protection relays, KACO string inverters, and a Desigo building-management layer. Under favorable conditions the site can meet 100% of its energy needs from on-site renewable generation, and it exports surplus power back to Duke Energy through net energy metering. Siemens says the campus now runs carbon-neutral when paired with other efficiency upgrades.
Why It Matters
For an industrial site, the value of a microgrid is measured in avoided downtime: a grid outage at a factory that builds medium-voltage switchgear and transformers stalls production that the rest of the power industry depends on. By combining 1.25 MW of solar with 3.9 MWh of storage and islanding controls, Siemens can keep critical lines running through outages while shaving demand charges the rest of the time. The project also doubles as a working showroom — Siemens sells the same microgrid controllers, inverters, and protection relays to the industrial and data center customers watching how its own plant performs.
Critical Perspective
A 3.9 MWh battery is modest relative to the load of a 272,000-square-foot manufacturing plant, so full islanding likely depends on curtailing non-critical loads during an extended outage rather than running the whole site indefinitely on solar and storage. The deployment is also unmistakably a marketing asset for a vendor that supplies every major component, which makes independent performance data — actual islanding duration, round-trip efficiency, demand-charge savings — the figures worth watching once the site has a full year of operation behind it.
Sources
- Siemens — Siemens Launches Wendell Microgrid at HQ Campus (May 11, 2026)
- Engineering.com — Siemens powers on microgrid at North Carolina facility
- Daily Energy Insider — Siemens opens microgrid at North Carolina facility
- WRAL — Siemens can run Wendell HQ from ‘microgrid’ if power goes out
